The perception of Millennials: Me versus we

by Hayden Smith
Staff Writer

When I talk to my friends about where we dream we’ll be in the next years or so, we all say something similar: living in a decent neighborhood in a cozy apartment (or a house, for the less disillusioned of us), making a livable paycheck and not having to stress out all the time.

There are variations, of course, like if any of us want a pet or three, or if there’s anyone we would like to share our respective homes with. But, in general, we all have a very simple goal of living a relatively stable life.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph.D. of Clark University, has called millennials, the generation my friends and I belong to, “Generation We,” due to both the increased concerns our generation has shown about social issues and society as a whole as well as our sprawling interconnectedness and sense of a larger community brought about from being raised in the wake of a more worldwide web.

His viewpoint, however, is exceedingly rare. From Time’s inflammatory cover of “The ‘Me Me Me’ Generation” to Jean Twenge’s book, which doubles as the inspiration to Arnett’s own label, Generation Me, you become hard-pressed to find a single source on the outside that would stand by the sides of the new generation.

When Time magazine calls millennials a self-centered and entitled generation, it confuses, hurts and outrages a lot of the targets. What is it that they think we demand?

SNL had a sketch about a year ago belittling millennials for having “trendy” sexual orientations and gender identities, namely bisexuality and nonbinary genders, respectively. Is wanting respect for your identity considered entitlement?

The debate over the minimum wage still rages on, with a popular perennial remark in conservative circles telling minimum wage-working employees to simply “get a real job,” despite the harsh, yet often forgotten reality that there may be no other job available to them. Is wanting a living wage considered entitlement?

When Senator Bernie Sanders said he would try to create a system to send American students to college for free, I heard relatives scoff over this, since they were able to pay their way through college. None of them seemed aware of the fact that tuition has skyrocketed, while minimum wage has, comparatively, hardly budged. Is wanting to live a life without an insurmountable lifelong debt considered entitlement?

When Twenge wrote about rampantly increasing generational narcissism in her book, she based her conclusions on a study of college-aged millennials using the NPI, an older test, now outdated and known to be unreliable, used to measure narcissism in a person. A more effective alternative might have been instead to ask them about their goals for the future.

If she had realized how many young millennials are just hoping for a decent life with decent people, perhaps she would have changed the title of her book to something a little more fitting.

Copyright 2017 The Gayly – April 26, 2017 @ 11:10 a.m.